A poem from Luci Shaw:

God Speaks in Blue

My friend hands me a gift
from overseas.  “Here,” she says.
“For you.”  The small packet rustles
with dry particles.  Through thin paper
my fingers feel the nubs.  I thank her,

 turning over the plain brown envelope.
There from the other side a photo–
the vivid, blunt cross of Mecanopsis Betonicifolia,
a Himalayan Blue Poppy–looks at me with
its gold eye, four azure petals blazing.

A blue to color a dream.  The blue
of Mary’s mantle according to Raphael.
The blue at the heart of a gas flame, within
an ice cave, one a cerulean door in a white wall
on Santorini, a kind of blue that

catches my heart ajar and blows it wide open.
Dry seeds and a picture, until next spring.
But, oh, if only I could be alive enough
to burn like this flower.  If only
I could bloom…